**SPOILERS** The movie is a lot like "The Killers" involving a robbery gone wrong. The film has the surviving hood John Muller, Paul Henreid, of a blotched robbery on the run from both the police and the mobster Rocky Stawsyc, Thomas Browne Henry, who's gambling den he and his friends ripped off.
Out on parole Muller just couldn't adjust to the outside, of prison walls, world and quickly got back to business in robbing a gambling den in L.A. The den owner Rocky Stawsyc's boys end up catching two of Muller's partners in crime and then offing them off camera. It's now Mullen and his partner Marcy, Hurbert Rudley, that are left to split the money taken from the gambling establishment; a cool $200,000.00.
With the news of Marcy being gunned down by the Stawsyc Gang in far off Mexico City Muller knows that his days are numbered and it's only a matter of time before he himself gets iced. It's then almost by accident that Muller finds out that this big city psychiatrist Dr. Victor Emil Bartok, also played by Pau Henreid, is a dead ringer for himself! The only problem is that Brotok has a noticeable scar on his left cheek which Muller doesn't!
With nothing to lose and everything top gain Muller plans to murder Dr. Bartok and, under surgical conditions, scar himself in order to both impersonate him as well as keep the Stawsyc Mob from finding and gunning him down!
****SPOILER ALERT*** There's just one little problem which Muller will soon find out, to his both shock and amazement, and that's that Dr. Bartok has some very dark secrets of his own that will come to the surface later in the movie. It's that what Muller doesn't know about Dr. Bartok that will in the end lead to his demise!
Well thought out film noir that has a number of surprises in it that will keep you both interested and confused at the same time. Muller's murder of Dr. Bartok is done so haphazardly that it takes a few minutes to realize that he was actually killed! There's also the relationship that Muller has with the late Dr. Bartok's secretary Evelyn Hahn,Joan Bennett, that seemed to go nowhere.
Evelyn seemed to have absolutely no interest in Muller when she found out that he wasn't her lover Dr. Bartok but was still willing to check out of country to Honolulu Hawaii with him. This after an enraged Muller smacked Evelyn around so hard that he almost knocked out a couple of her teeth! It was the surprise ending that just about saved the movie with Muller finding out that he wasn't the only person in Los Angeles with gambling problems which, in him being so street smart, shouldn't have been a surprise to him at all!
P.S Look for a young Jack Webb the future Sgt. Joe Friday of the popular 1950's TV Cop show "Dragnet" as one of Stawsyc's hoods called Bullseye.
Out on parole Muller just couldn't adjust to the outside, of prison walls, world and quickly got back to business in robbing a gambling den in L.A. The den owner Rocky Stawsyc's boys end up catching two of Muller's partners in crime and then offing them off camera. It's now Mullen and his partner Marcy, Hurbert Rudley, that are left to split the money taken from the gambling establishment; a cool $200,000.00.
With the news of Marcy being gunned down by the Stawsyc Gang in far off Mexico City Muller knows that his days are numbered and it's only a matter of time before he himself gets iced. It's then almost by accident that Muller finds out that this big city psychiatrist Dr. Victor Emil Bartok, also played by Pau Henreid, is a dead ringer for himself! The only problem is that Brotok has a noticeable scar on his left cheek which Muller doesn't!
With nothing to lose and everything top gain Muller plans to murder Dr. Bartok and, under surgical conditions, scar himself in order to both impersonate him as well as keep the Stawsyc Mob from finding and gunning him down!
****SPOILER ALERT*** There's just one little problem which Muller will soon find out, to his both shock and amazement, and that's that Dr. Bartok has some very dark secrets of his own that will come to the surface later in the movie. It's that what Muller doesn't know about Dr. Bartok that will in the end lead to his demise!
Well thought out film noir that has a number of surprises in it that will keep you both interested and confused at the same time. Muller's murder of Dr. Bartok is done so haphazardly that it takes a few minutes to realize that he was actually killed! There's also the relationship that Muller has with the late Dr. Bartok's secretary Evelyn Hahn,Joan Bennett, that seemed to go nowhere.
Evelyn seemed to have absolutely no interest in Muller when she found out that he wasn't her lover Dr. Bartok but was still willing to check out of country to Honolulu Hawaii with him. This after an enraged Muller smacked Evelyn around so hard that he almost knocked out a couple of her teeth! It was the surprise ending that just about saved the movie with Muller finding out that he wasn't the only person in Los Angeles with gambling problems which, in him being so street smart, shouldn't have been a surprise to him at all!
P.S Look for a young Jack Webb the future Sgt. Joe Friday of the popular 1950's TV Cop show "Dragnet" as one of Stawsyc's hoods called Bullseye.